a blog by Enya

Dealing With Overwhelming Feelings – #BEDS Day 24

A little background: so earlier this week, the College of Engineering of MSU-IIT held a General Assembly & Acquaintance Party (GAAP) with a fandom crossover theme: Game of Thrones vs. Harry Potter. I helped with floating candles and operated in high anticipation for the assembly of the college’s Iron Throne with it’s college governor, Daphne Villas dressing it up as the mother of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen. IT WAS GONNA BE EPIC BUT IN MY TYPICAL SICKLY FASHION I FAILED TO ATTEND. Within a fortnight, I made my way to COE with a couple of friends and had an impromptu photo shoot with the glorious throne conveniently placed outside of the building. Naturally, an arrangement to simultaneously change our Facebook profile photos was made.

Basically we all had an overwhelming amount of positive feedback in the form of ‘Likes’ and comments, and to tell you the truth despite it sounding like a very egotistical statement – this was new and this was sort-of great.

Somewhere in between my typing of this blog post and my changing of profile photos, I had a panic attack. Pools of negative thoughts started waving over me even if I was just going about my usual rounds of internet habits. Breathing got a little difficult and my limbs grew a bit stiff as I waited for my order to arrive at Mister Donut. It came to the point in which I logged out of Facebook to not get notifications – but logged back in anyway because I was chatting with a couple of friends and blatantly tried to ignore the consistent popping of the notification. To no avail.

Just the idea of getting a lot of praise makes me uncomfortable – it’s a sensation I need to get used to despite being my own biggest critic and skeptic. I know it’s irrational. It just doesn’t change the fact that these situations trigger a happy little episode of me gripping the tables or chairs, instructing myself to breath and count in healthy intervals to calm myself, all the while waiting for the sensation to pass altogether. What happened to me was both old and new to me – I’ve had panic attacks before, but getting a panic attack from a seemingly positive internet social scenario was completely different.

Until such time I have come to terms to the overwhelming waves of emotion as of the moment, I may just learn to lay extremely low for a while.